Tuesday, 30 November 2010

'CAN PEOPLE FEEL THE PAIN OF OTHERS' Article Review (Assignment 4)

‘Can People Feel The Pain Of Others’

Jacob Silverman

www.howstuffworks.com

‘Can People Feel The Pain Of Others’ is an article about synesthesia. It exists to make others aware of the presence of synesthesia and its symptoms. Synesthesia is a cross wiring in the brain between the sensory receptors. This causes sufferers ‘ synesthesiacs’ to experience unusual sensory experiences very different to how a ‘normal’ person might perceive them.

The author suggests that a lot more of us are synesthesiacs than originally thought. He uses an example of a woman in a lecture on synesthesia who was surprised to discover that not everyone had the same sensory experiences as she did.

What’s really interesting about this article is that it shows that people who have cross wiring in the sensory part of their brain do experience the world in a different way. This is something that I believe is very important to my research into reality.

Silverman uses evidence of others research to discuss the developments in our understanding of synesthesia and the different types. The information he has collected is very focused on the most prominent characteristics of synesthesia. He is a writer and not a doctor or a scientist so he has no primary research into synesthesia. Although the author has found no conflicting sources of information he takes all the secondary research as fact and could be misunderstanding some information.

There are it seems four different types of synesthesia. These are colour-grapheme synesthesia, sound-colour synesthesia, word taste synesthesia and taste touch synesthesia, although Silverman states that there may be more he doesn’t mention a source for this which could point to holes in his research.

By only looking at a couple of sources concerning synesthesia Silverman could be missing a lot of information in his article, which could mislead his readers.

Silverman has successfully written a short informative article about synesthesia and its symptoms. He puts forward his information of the subject in a clear and focused way.